InsiderOnline Blog: April 2012

The long and the short of it is: maybe. Google+ is, in many ways, Google’s attempt to rival Facebook. With obvious successes in search, video, and a whole host of other ventures, it seemed logical that Google would strike gold with Google+. However, things have not gone quite as planned for Google.

The platform started with a bang, getting 20 million users in the first 24 days. It took Facebook and Twitter over 1,000 days to get 20 million users. That was about the height of Google+’s popularity. After the initial splash, it largely fell flat. There are a few heavy users, but those are few and far between. It is mostly a ghost town. To try to get more people to use it, Google redesigned it; some say it is too little, too late.

Having said that, there are still reasons to pay attention to Google+. The main reason is that when you click the +1 button embedded on many Web sites, that click registers, not only on your Google+ profile, but also as a recommendation on Google searches. What that means is that when you are logged in to Google and you search for something, it will show you your friends that recommended a link; you also get the option of seeing only links recommended by your friends.

You don’t need to spend that much time on it for now, but like everything on the Internet, that can change. It’s always better to be on the forefront, than to try to catch up. (Check out The Heritage Foundation’s Google+ page.)